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me cnanges Degan tne moment we stepped off the plane. We had left the crystal-clear frozen air of a November morning at Dulles. Two and a half hours later we stepped down into 78 degree, moisture-laden Houston. You take one breath and you know you're in Texas! The gassy smells of the refineries are exciting and revolting at the same time. It’s like being in the damp exhalation of some huge oil-eating beast.
We live in an apartment in a suburb called Pearland, about 30 minutes drive south from downtown. The drive between Houston and Pearland is incredible. It is difficult to imagine how any place could be so flat. It’s as if a giant had been able to pour the highways out of a bucket directly onto the already smooth ground. There are very few trees; the ones that do survive are small and straggly, so there are great areas of uninterrupted flatness. Coming home from Houston on 288, you could say we live just beyond the “vanishing points” of the horizon. On the way home we pass a wonderful farmer’s stand where crude signs advertise fresh shrimp, pecans, oranges, vegetables, hot tamales, and boudin, a rice dish. After a long day in the city, it’s a joyful thing to head home in a car full of the aroma of freshly made tamales.
The road to Pearland passes very ugly small businesses with houses mixed right in. No pears. A few ;, s prickly pear cactus plants, though. Here and there a small open field of brown grass displays a few head of cattle. Brahma cattle and many mixtures of Brahmas, with their strange ridges of fat, are popular here. No Angus. The cattle all have horns and they look spooky and sort of rangy - definitely not the comfortable, plump English-breakfast cow varieties of home.
The soil is black; the mud is black, black, black, without a trace of Rappahannock red anywhere. I used to think the laundry detergent ads where they showed kids covered with black dirt were faked. Now I know differently.
The grass is different, too. The blades are thick and broad, with a texture exactly like those plastic doormats with the daisies in the cor
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